PAC/PEC adopts GCCPC’s report

In his contribution, the National Assembly Member for Niamina West, Hon. Lamin Jadama, said in the GCCPC financial statement and report, the audit was planned and performed in accordance with the International Standards of Supreme Audit Institutions (ISSAIs).

The auditor noted weaknesses in the entity’s accounting function and operations, he said, adding that in order to conclude the audit, the entity should revise its financial statements for the year 2014.

“I am not sure whether this revision has been done and I, therefore, want to seek clarification from all those concerned most importantly the external auditors being the National Audit Office,” Hon. Jadama said.

The National Assembly Member for Illiassa, Hon. Lamin Jammeh, also thanked the board and management of GCCPC for their report and for being 95 per cent compliant with GPPA regulations.

However, he said: “I would want to advice GCCPC to avoid dealing with institutions that are not registered with the authority in the future to avoid causing potential loss of revenue to the Government of The Gambia.”

He said he also had two observations on the audited accounts, as the auditors said in their opinion they expected the two motor vehicles - GCCPC1 and GCCPC2 - that need value because they were fully depreciated in 2012, and “are still not worthy as disclosed in the financial statement from which economic benefit still flows to the commission”, and was not only the vehicles that were depreciated.

The second observation was that they also had the plant and machinery as zero balance at the end of the year. Therefore, he urged the GCCPC to revalue as possible to avoid such scenarios, because they don’t welcome idea of unqualified accounts being brought to them, he added.

The other point he made was under payable because “the institution still owes income tax of D42,459 and pension of D50,791 and a bigger amount of D300 on injury compensation”.

He wondered why they had not paid because the amounts had already been deducted from staff income, he said.

Hon. Ousman Njie, National Assembly Member for Sami, also thanked the board and management of GCCPC for their report.

He too observed that the commission had not submitted a comprehensive payroll instead they had submitted a man-power budget.

He then urged management to improve on the 2015 account to ensure they minimise audit queries because there was a saying that “any audit that has minimum or less audit queries or none is a very good one”.

Responding to all the questions posed to GCCPC, the Director of Finance, Ndey Babou, said: “I would like to inform you that we are working with the management team to revalue all our assets so that we can attach the value to our 2015 [statement].”

She said they wanted to include the two vehicles to attach the value to it, but they needed to hire an independent person to do that because they “are not expert” in that area.

Regarding the payables, she said it was noted that they had not paid income tax for 2014 and “it was only for December”, adding that they “do not accumulate arrears for income tax, injury and pension” and that they always had one month arrears.